Ryan Kirksey
The following recap contains spoilers for The White Lotus S3E3, “The Meaning of Dreams” (written and directed by Mike White)
Note to self. The next time I find myself in Thailand, never, and I mean NEVER, buy weed from a random shop on the side of the road that’s right next to a venomous snake farm.
This is one of but many lessons I believe our guests at The White Lotus in Sumai, Thailand will learn over the course of this third season, but perhaps none is more critical than avoiding that Thai Chronic. Much like in Episode 2, most of our characters visiting The White Lotus this season don’t find themselves in too much trouble (apart from Rick and Chelsea’s snake adventures), but it appears the tensions among the guests are beginning to simmer just as hot as the weather in Thailand.
Let’s go group by group to see how each is acclimating to their second day on the island.
The Ratliff Family
“Just because people are rich doesn’t mean they’re not trashy,” says Victoria Ratliff (Parker Posey) to her children at dinner. Well, I got some news for you, Victoria. There are lots of trashy people who are rich, and most members of your family fit right into that stigma.
Piper (Sarah Catherine Hook), who can’t seem to coordinate a time to actually visit the Buddhist temple her family planned this trip around in the first place, is far and away the most grounded and rational person of the group. But even she is trying to (astutely) warn her family that their mother’s dreams about standing on a beach as a tsunami comes is an ominous sign of some kind of warning.
Patrick (Jason Isaacs) can’t escape the barrage of phone calls and messages he is receiving about his office being raided by the FBI. It’s gotten so bad that the office has even started trying to reach Saxon (Patrick Schwarzenegger), who admittedly “doesn’t have a lot going on” at work these days. A.K.A., he is riding daddy’s coattails for clients and prestige.
This forces Patrick’s hand as he believes the only way he can keep his family from finding out what’s happening back at work is to finally capitulate to the hotel staff and have the family turn in all their phones, watches, and computers. Patrick looks to immediately regret this decision right after he makes it. He is so distraught that he breaks his own rule and takes one of Victoria’s lorazepams so he can sleep the pain away. Addiction just starts with a taste, so I wonder if we will see Patrick try to numb away or sleep away the pain for the rest of the season.
Meanwhile, Lochlan (Sam Nivola) is getting his posture worked on, which turns into a session where he learns that he is really defending his feminine side. Saxon continues to try and convince Chloe (Charlotte Le Bon) or Chelsea (Aimee Lou Wood) to do the Thailand Tango with him. Chelsea is still disgusted, but Chloe (who lies in bed next to old, bald Gary every night) finally starts to flirt back: “I hear you’re a real douche?”
Great love stories have been built on a lot less.
Jaclyn, Kate, and Laurie
After a little more than some light pressure on Laurie (Carrie Coon) that she should have a fling with wellness instructor Valentin (Arnas Fedaravicius), Kate (Leslie Bibb) finally gets a taste of the medicine she has been dishing out the first two episodes. After Laurie comes back excited about her session (“I haven’t been almost touched by a man like that for a long time.”), the trio discusses the merits of new age medicine and spirituality.
In this conversation, Kate admits she has been attending church ever since moving to Austin with her husband, Dave. She loves the people. It’s very moving. The people are “more conservative than my LA people,” but they are “really nice families.” We all see where this is going from a mile away. Jaclyn (Michelle Monaghan) and Laurie finally coax out of Kate that she voted for Donald Trump despite being an independent. The two girlfriends look at Kate like she just decided to elope with one of the monkeys that live on the hotel grounds.
Late that night, Kate wakes up to hear Jaclyn and Laure talking about how she has always been like this, always taking the personality of the people she is with, and how nothing ever changes with her. Doesn’t feel so good, does it Kate? This group appears to start getting in some real trouble next week, so it will be interesting to see if someone like Kate were to withhold something that Laurie needed, for example, if Kate thought Laurie was impeding on the friendship she has with Jaclyn
But Kate goes to church every Sunday now, so suuuuuurely that’s something she would never do.
Rick and Chelsea
When Chelsea visited the hotel gift store before it was robbed in Episode 2, she was admiring a gold snake choker, even pretending to try it on. Turns out that was a harbinger of the dangerous things to come for her in this episode when she and Rick (Walton Goggins) venture into town.
Rick makes a point after his latest wellness/stress management session that he needs to get into town to get some more weed (makes sense, probably prescribed over there). He finds a little store on the road and immediately lights up. However, he gets a lot more than he bargained for because the weed was laced with something stronger and turns Rick on to an ultra high for the afternoon.
I can’t think of a worse place to be the first thing you see when mega high than a snake show filled with cobras and pythons, any of which could kill someone “in 30 minutes.” But it turns out the show isn’t the problem, it’s the fact that all the snakes that aren’t in use are caged up and forced to live in captivity their whole lives. High Rick believes this is an injustice that deserves correcting and begins to let them all loose. One bites Chelsea in the calf, and they have to race her to the hospital so the venom doesn’t poison her.
Rick eventually apologizes and blames his actions on being high, but there is clearly more there. In his wellness session earlier in the day, Rick says, “Even though I can’t get my life back, maybe I can still get some satisfaction.” This could be as superficial as murdering the man who murdered his father (who is apparently in Bangkok). But it also works on the level that Rick sees himself in these snakes.
He tells Chelsea that night, “even evil things shouldn’t be treated like shit.” Rick is locked in a cage of being misunderstood and irrelevant just as much as he is locked in a cage of revenge for his father. Whether he is able to break himself out of either, just like be broke out those snakes, will be one of the more interesting subplots of the season.
Gary and Belinda
Belinda (Natasha Rothwell) is still starting to feel all the things to Pornchai (Dom Hetrakul) as they continue to spend so much time together in her mentorship. Pornchai even drinks for the first time in, like, forever at dinner, but neither feels the time is right to move things to more official than “it’s complicated” right now.
Belinda does tell Pornchai the story about Greg (Jon Gries) and Tanya over dinner and decides she does want to confront him. Not surprisingly, Gary/Greg says he’s never seen her before and has never dated anyone named Tanya. Unconvinced, Belinda leaves them alone but has to spend the rest of her dinner with Gary/Greg staring daggers at her from across the restaurant.
I guess that could have been another mood killer for Belinda, but I bet she wishes she had made a move with Pornchai when her time on the episode closes with her hearing mysterious creaks from inside her room.
Gaitok and Sritala
Gaitok (Tayme Thapthimthong) is still seemingly riding high from his role in trying to break up the robbery of the hotel gift shop in Episode 2. He is confident enough to give it one more shot with Mook (Lalisa Manobal). But he also has enough gumption to go straight to the boss, Sritala (Lek Patravadi), and ask her to make him one of her private security.
These security guards are the ones Mook was giving a double-take to in Episode 2. These guys, she believes, see a lot of adventure and have a lot more responsibility than letting cars go through a gate at the hotel. Not wanting to miss his shot, Gaitok proposes the promotion and waits for her reply.
However, as the episode ends, Gaitok’s supervisor says he needs to be in at seven the next morning for a meeting with Fabian (Christian Friedel) about the robbery incident. Apparently, getting distracted by Valentin and letting the burglars just drive into the hotel is not going to look good on the next performance review. If this is a fireable offense for Gaitok, I wonder if he is wound so tightly that he just might pop.
Most Likely to End Up Dead in the Water
Despite the stares Gary gives to Belinda when she finally has the nerve to approach him at dinner, I don’t even want to fathom the idea that Mike White would let Gary do something that caused Belinda harm. Based on Zion’s initial reaction to the body floating by in the water in Episode 1, I also don’t believe Belinda is the person we see dead. That’s not to mean Gary doesn’t think he needs to do something to Belinda to keep his cover. If you watched the scenes from next week’s episode, that hunch seemingly intensifies as Belinda begins an investigation.
My new working theory is that Gary’s past is uncovered by Belinda. She tells Chloe (after whatever it is she plans to do next with Saxon), and Belinda and Chloe confront Greg. It’s Gary’s body that Zion sees floating by in the opening minutes of the season’s first episode. I don’t at all want Belinda and Chloe to be implicated for something that happens to the human colostomy bag that is Gary. Hopefully, they can use whatever gunfire erupts on the grounds of The White Lotus to get away with Gary’s murder.
